When Lady Gaga launched her Born This Way Foundation at the Harvard Graduate School of Education earlier this year, she lent major star-power to a growing movement to stem the tide of bullying and violence in schools.

In the US, the movement's impetus follows in the wake of a string of suicides by bullied LGBT youth as well as a history of devastating school shootings perpetrated by students felt to be social outcasts.

The popstar, who describes herself as "mother monster" to millions of fans worldwide, is speaking out about the importance of youth working to build safe spaces, and recognising that schools are powerful places to spark societal change, she hopes her message will "inject love, acceptance and tolerance into culture." At the end of the day, the goal is not only to "save the victim," she says, "but also save the bully."

How can we save both the victims and the bullies? It is a question on many minds as educators grapple with developing measures to combat school violence. At the heart of this challenge is recognising that all young people need to learn to develop healthy relationships and ways of expressing themselves.

Whether we think about violence as a danger in the learning environment or as a wider threat faced by young people, schools are powerful places to reach and teach young people the importance of empathy. Sports and arts programmes have long been touted as important educational opportunities for helping students build fundamental life skills, such as self-esteem, teamwork and managing emotions. What might happen if sports and art were combined into a targeted pro-empathy, anti-violence curriculum?

School administrators and celebrity advocates alike may want to take a note from the playbook of one budding young social entrepreneur who has done just this – by leveraging the power of dance to bring empathy training into classrooms around the world, with a focus on the most at-risk communities.

Sara Potler is the founder of a social enterprise called Dance 4 Peace. Her work, which began while a Fulbright scholar in Bogota, Colombia, has grown into peace education programmes in 15 cities across four continents. Their business model generates revenue through low-cost fees, enabling them to scale up their reach.

"In Bogota, where our organisation began, the students we worked with were exposed to violence related to drug trafficking in the streets, and sometimes even in their homes," says Potler. "Until Dance 4 Peace, the peace-building programs in their schools didn't quite meet students where they were.

"It wasn't until the reggaeton music came on the boombox that they recognised this was something different – something they could relate to – and began to open up to tell stories through their bodies."

The catharsis of music and movement gets at the heart of what makes these young people tick. Potler and her colleagues carefully mould the curriculum by location and context in order to help students build the social and emotional skills they need to understand and transform conflict in their lives.

Dance 4 Peace, which has programmes in Latin America and the Philippines, has also experienced success with urban schools in US and European cities, including New York, Washington DC and Leipzig, Germany.

Whether in schools in the developing world or in low-income urban areas, Potler's staff have clearly seen the complexity of the challenges facing young people in different places and the human desire to overcome. "Our goal," says Potler, "is to instill the core competencies students need to succeed in the classroom and eventually the work place, so they can become the leaders and peacemakers their communities need."

Potler says the organisation recorded a decrease in negative behaviours in a single semester. In one New York school they saw a drop in suspensions from 53 to 16 incidents.

An appreciation for dance continues to grow in popular culture thanks in part to the television show So You Think You Can Dance, an international hit developed by British producer Nigel Lythgoe. The series celebrates young dancers from all walks of life, from poppers and lockers raised on the streets, to ballerinas trained in the studio.

Can dance be a catalyst for at-risk youth? Through her work, Potler has seen firsthand that targeted goals for social change can be achieved through the art of movement.

Christine Horansky is an award-winning advocate for global education and champion for women and girls, who has been named to the World Economic Forum's inaugural global shapers class. She holds a masters from Harvard Graduate School and in 2012, was named one of the Top 99 most influential foreign policy leaders under 33 by the Diplomatic Courier

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